Peter’s tone was tense, his speech clipped. He’d remained seated behind the desk since his son came in, rigid backed, his whole body clenched, like a prisoner on his way to the firing squad. He wished Robbie would go away.
Peter Templeton loved his son. He was aware that he was failing him. But every time he looked at the boy, he felt overcome by a wave of anger so violent he could hardly breathe. Suddenly the bond that Robbie and Alexandra had shared in life, the love between mother and son that had once been Peter’s greatest delight, now left him consumed with jealous rage. It was as if Robbie had stolen those hours from him, those countless, loving moments with Alex. Now she was gone, for ever. And Peter wanted those moments back.
He knew it was crazy. None of this was Robbie’s fault. But still the fury corroded his chest like battery acid. The irony was that Peter felt nothing but love for Lexi, the baby who had ‘caused’ Alex’s death. In his grief-addled mind, Lexi was a victim, like himself. She had never even known her mother, poor darling. But Robert? Robert was a thief. He had stolen Alexandra from Peter. Peter couldn’t forgive him for that.
Even now, Peter sometimes overheard the boy talking to her.
Mommy, are you there? Mommy, it’s me.
Robbie would sit at the piano, a beatific smile on his face, and Peter knew that Alex was with him, comforting him, loving him, holding him. But when Peter woke in the night, screaming Alex’s name, there was nothing. Nothing but the blackness and silence of the grave.
‘No dad.’ Robert’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘I didn’t want to ask anything. I … I was going to play the piano. But I can come back another time.’
At the mention of the word ‘piano’, a nerve on Peter’s jaw began to twitch. He’d been idly tapping a pencil on the desk. Now he gripped it so hard it snapped in his hand.
Barney Hunt frowned. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
But Peter wasn’t fine. His hand was bleeding. One by one, slow, heavy drips of blood splashed onto the polished wood of the desk.
Barney smiled reassuringly at his godson. ‘We won’t be long. Five minutes and then I’ll come and find you. We can play some catch, how’s that sound?’
‘Good.’
Another shy smile and Robbie was gone, slipping out of the room as silently as he had arrived.
Barney took a deep breath.
‘You know, Peter, the kid needs you. He’s grieving too. He …’
Peter raised his hand. ‘We’ve been through this Barney. Robert’s all right. If you want to worry about something, worry about these damn newspaper reporters. They’re the damn problem, OK?’
Barney Hunt shook his head.
He felt for Robert, he really did. But there was nothing more he could do.
Eve Blackwell closed her eyes and tried to fantasize about something that would bring her to orgasm.
‘Is that good, baby? Do you like that?’
Keith Webster, her husband, was drenched in sweat, pounding away at her from behind like an over-excited terrier. He’d insisted on regularly ‘making love’, as he put it, throughout Eve’s pregnancy. Now that her time was fast approaching, her belly was so vastly swollen that doggy-style sex was the only option. A small mercy for Eve, who was no longer forced to look at Keith’s weak, weaselly face twisted into a mask of sexual ecstasy every time he made love to her.
If you could call it making love. Keith’s dick was so small, it registered only as a mild irritant. Rather like having a badly behaved child sitting behind you in a movie theatre who won’t stop kicking the back of your seat.
Eve faked a moan.
‘That’s wonderful darling! I’m almost there!’
And suddenly she was, her mind lost in a delicious, slow-moving slide-show of images from the past:
Herself as a thirteen-year-old, seducing her married English teacher, Mr Parkinson. When she’d cried rape, she’d destroyed the pathetic little man’s life. But he’d deserved it. They all did.
Fucking her way through the military academy that adjoined her and Alexandra’s finishing school in Switzerland. How intoxicating sex had been back then, back when men used to throw themselves at her feet!
Stabbing George Mellis in the heart and dumping his body in the sea at Dark Harbor. Just thinking about the look of surprise on George’s face as the blade tore through his flesh could sometimes bring Eve to climax.
The world knew George Mellis as Alexandra Blackwell’s first husband – a footnote in the great Blackwell Family History. In reality he was a sadistic playboy and pathological liar who had once raped and sodomized Eve, a crime for which he ultimately paid with his life.
Of course, Alex never knew the truth about George Mellis. She never knew he was in league with her evil twin sister; never knew that Eve and George had remained lovers throughout Alex’s brief marriage to him; never knew that the pair of them had intended to murder her and steal her inheritance; nor that Eve had been forced to murder George instead when their plans went awry.
Alex never knew the truth. But Eve knew. Eve knew everything.
Not that Eve had minded killing George. In fact it had been a pleasure.
Keith Webster increased the pace of his thrusts, shaking with excitement as his delicate surgeon’s hands reached around for his wife’s enormous, pregnancy-swollen breasts.
‘Oh, Christ Eve, I love you! I’m coming baby, I’m coming!’
He let out a sound that was half groan, half whimper. Eve pictured George Mellis in the moment of his death, then mentally substituted Keith’s face for George’s. She orgasmed instantly.
Keith slid off her back like a toad slipping down a wet rock. He lay back against the pillow, his eyes closed in post-coital contentment. ‘That was incredible. Are you OK honey? Is the baby OK?’
Eve stroked her belly lovingly. ‘The baby’s fine, darling. You mustn’t worry.’
Keith Webster had been neurotic about his wife’s pregnancy from the start, but Alexandra’s death a few weeks ago had heightened his anxiety tenfold. It was common knowledge that Eve and Alexandra’s own mother, Marianne, had died giving birth to them. Now the same fate had befallen Alex. It was easy to imagine that Eve might be next. That some unseen genetic fault lurked in the shadows, waiting to snatch his beloved from him.
Keith Webster had loved Eve Blackwell from the moment he set eyes on her. It was true that, shortly after their marriage, he had deliberately mutilated her face. Playing on Eve’s innate vanity, he had persuaded her to let him perform a minor operation to erase the laughter lines around her eyes. Then, once he had her under anesthetic and utterly at his mercy, he had proceeded to destroy her beautiful features one by one.
At first Eve had been angry, of course. He’d expected that. But now she saw things clearly. He had to do it. He had no choice. As long as Eve remained so mesmerizingly, intoxicatingly beautiful, he was at risk of losing her. Losing her to other, less worthy men, men who could never love her the way that he did. Men like George Mellis, who had once beaten Eve so badly she had almost died. Keith Webster had restored her looks after that attack. It was the day they met. Eve had been so deliciously grateful afterwards, he’d fallen in love with her on the spot.
But what Keith Webster giveth, Keith Webster could also taketh away.
It was a lesson Eve needed to learn.
Others might find his wife’s grotesquely scarred features repellant, but not Keith Webster. In his eyes, Eve would always be beautiful. The most beautiful creature on earth.
Keith Webster had no illusions about